Fidelity
by Myrrhee
Summary: Four pairs of eyes stare at Uncas as he tries to take on an entire war party on his own, and wonder. UncasAlice
1. Chingachgook, He Who Sees All

Chingachgook is a tracker and a trapper. He can look at a footprint and build in his mind the body of the man who left it behind, and he is most famous for it. But he can also track the signs in the eyes and the hands of his sons.

When his youngest son Uncas gives him a look that is simple yet full of meaning and climbs up the rock, right after the youngest Munro girl is escorted out of the Huron village, he wonders why he is surprised to discover he is _not_ surprised.

 _(He is only scared)_

* * *

Chingachgook can read the many different colors of Nathaniel's fiery temper: when it means fear, or concern, or even good humor. When it means sadness. As much as he may try to wear the mantle of harshness and heartlessness, there is much inside his white son that manifests alongside his biting words.

He can also read Uncas' silences, though his Mahican son is more open with his feelings – a rarity in the frontier. Uncas can shoot at a thousand warriors without even the shadow of a tremor in his hands, but even the Yengeese girls understood why he slumped against his musket at the remains of the Cameron homestead, as if his grief had settled on his shoulders like a boulder.

But both his sons, different as they are, have a great sense of honor. While they kill, they do it quickly, cleanly, never laughing over the blood on their knife or their tomahawk. They do not hunt the weak.

This is why it takes but a fraction of a heartbeat, a shared look between Uncas and Nathaniel and a look from them both to the girls and the man, to decide that they will escort the Munro sisters and their growling dog of a companion to Fort William Henry.

All the way there, Chingachgook sees Nathaniel circle closer and closer to Cora Munro: he is like a hawk, flying down to capture what he desires with swift determination. Chingachgook suspected it would happen as soon as he saw the elder Miss Munro grab a dead man's pistol without much ceremony. Nathaniel protects weakness, but he does not much love it, and there is anything but weakness in Cora Munro.

What Chingachgook does not expect is the way Uncas follows Alice Munro with his eyes.

Chingachgook doesn't understand what he is doing, and he suspects Uncas doesn't either. His Mahican son is simply following the pull of his emotions – what they are, Chingachgook doesn't know. He wonders at first if it might be the same thing that led little James Cameron to always leap trustingly into Uncas' arms: that is, his son's open wish to defend those who need it. If anyone anywhere needs protecting, it's most surely Alice Munro.

Except there is a keen focus to Uncas as he looks at Alice, one Chingachgook has seen him wear when they hunt a particularly difficult quarry – as if he is preparing himself for the disappointment of losing it.

Even as he chases on.

* * *

As he and Nathaniel finally race up the rock towards the Huron war party, Chingachgook's thoughts are flashing like rapid river-fish. Between leap and leap, between the worry and the solid focus on catching up to Magua or Uncas or even Alice, whoever is closer, he realizes why he is not surprised.

What he has witnessed is a clever hunt.

Ever the subtle trapper, Uncas has not gazed brazenly at his target, like his white brother does. He rarely sought Alice out. The girl is like a rabbit, easily startled, so Uncas instead approached slowly – then sprang.

He did not spring that night on the Ottawa burial grounds – that was survival. He did not spring beneath the waterfall as Magua's party approached – that was compassion, even if it was tinged by whatever else lies in his heart. No, Uncas springs, truly and decidedly for his rabbit's heart, right now as she is led, captive, up a narrow mountain trail.

Now, when she has already seen and smelled enough of him to react to his fox-fast lunge without fear.

If they both survive… Chingachgook worries they may not, for there is one of Uncas and many of the Huron, with the flames of Magua's anger blowing into an ever larger fire; worries more the more they ascend with no hint of Uncas, whose feet seem to have sprung wings.

If they both survive, there is little doubt in Chingachgook's mind that his son's hunt will end in success.


	2. Uncas, the Bounding Elk

As Uncas flies over rock and underbrush, determined to overtake the Huron war party, he wonders why it has come to this. He wonders why his caution has abandoned him, or when his confidence became larger than his sense of survival. He is accustomed to danger, but never though himself the kind to make rash decisions, like taking on far more than ten armed Hurons alone.

Uncas will have to rethink his ideas about himself, and more – after he has saved Alice.

Curiously, thoughts of Alice run alongside his practical thoughts, one never impeding the other: as he picks a rapid path up the craggy mountainside, he wonders why the sight of her leaving the Huron camp, a captive once more, moved his feet into action. As he leaps over noisy fallen leaves like an elk, preserving his silence, he muses that it felt like the pull of a rope, or perhaps the tug of a line when a fish is caught.

 _(He wonders who is the fish and who is the fisherman for a few beats of his heart, before deciding the thought is too absorbing for now)_

Uncas catches up to the war party, then rushes on unseen, wondering when his regular state of being came to include the nearness of the younger Munro girl. As he makes sure to keep to the shadows, to keep light of foot lest they hear him pass overhead, he remembers the cave behind the waterfall, and how Alice didn't bolt out of his arms, or scream.

She never screams. Her breath turns rapid and noisy when caught by fear, but she never makes any other sound or utters a word. Or recoils from the touch of strangers.

It made Uncas wonder if Alice perhaps took him and his touches for another inevitable part of her life on the warpath. Muskets, cannons, death and the hands of a redskin, all forced upon her without warning, all pressed up to her against her will.

That day, behind the waterfall, he was plenty surprised when Alice stayed in his arms long after her panic subsided. With his cheek pressed to the top of her head, Uncas had no way to tell if her eyes had finally lost their glassy distance, or if her face was frozen into a mask of fear. All he knew was that no part of him was keeping her where she lay, nestled into his chest, and that any slight shifting on his part resulted in Alice shrinking further against him.

Uncas had plucked at a strand of her hair then, combing it out with his fingers before slowly weaving it into a braid. Her hand had come up to touch it as it took shape, curiously, small white fingers tripping over his – she had withdrawn her hand a little then, letting him work.

But she hadn't moved it very far, so that Uncas' wrist or the back of his hand brushed hers as he worked down the length of it, as he tied off the end of the braid with spare twine from his pocket.

Uncas read voluntary acceptance in her closeness. He read something else, unnamable and bright, in the way Alice cupped the braid, running curious fingers over its length – and still remained there, back to his chest and tiny form between his arms, for a long time.

 _(A softness had been born in his heart then)_

As he presses against a small outcropping in the narrow path, waiting for the steps of the Huron scouting ahead to wander closer, Uncas wonders if it's the braid's fault. Did he twine Alice Munro's fate with his own as he tried to bring her comfort? Was some miniscule part of his soul accidentally caught in the weave of golden hair?

The steps of his prey have come close enough. Uncas raises his musket to the height of his chest.

He must ponder upon all this, and more – after he has saved Alice.


	3. Alice Munro, the sinless

When gunshots rend the empty silence of the mountain, Alice Munro's mind is abruptly thrust back into her body. In a flash, she is aware of her aching feet, of the rope still dangling from her left wrist, the one they'd bound her to Cora with. Of the fact that she is surrounded by the people of the man who's hell bent on killing them. Of a scream, fading into the abyss.

Then the beast called Magua rushes forward and his tomahawk descends-

\- onto the tomahawk of Uncas, and suddenly Alice Munro's heart is thrust back into her chest, numbness giving way to a wild vertigo of joy and fear.

Her first impulse is to rush towards Uncas.

It isn't another of the idiotic, childlike impulses she's had since landing here, driven by a desperate need for protection. Oh no, it's far more idiotic than that. So much that, even as her designated jailer moves to pull her back, Alice herself checks the impulse and concedes to the jerk, because she cannot protect Uncas.

Her small, weak hands would barely stop Magua's knife or his tomahawk for a fraction of a second, and she knows without needing to wonder overmuch that Uncas will immediately shift his focus to her and her welfare, if she dares come between them.

He will shift his focus and die.

The first slash that finds its target renders her breathless. There is blood on the green calico that sopped up her tears behind the waterfall, Magua looks so much stronger, unscathed as he is, and there is no sign of Mr. Poe or Uncas' father anywhere.

Then Uncas' eyes find hers.

Alice's heart, in free fall ever since the first clash of metal with metal, pivots and lurches, falling in a spiral dance now. They've exchanged so few words over the course of their catastrophic acquaintance, she and this silent Mohican with his heart in his eyes, but what she sees in the rigid line of his mouth and the shadow of tension in his brow is so clear, she thinks every last man assembled behind her can read it as well.

Uncas will leave the narrow mountain pass with her, or never leave at all.

He lunges for Magua a second later.

The protective impulse comes again, and this time Alice's hand comes free of her jailer's, but the overwhelming certainty of her helplessness and her uselessness overcome her.

Alice knows it is her fault. She has turned to Uncas time and again for brief moments of solace. Allowed him to protect her, branding him her protector in the process.

Singling him out for death.

When Alice turns her head, it isn't disgust at the blood or fear of the fight – she can hear every slash meeting the flesh behind the friendly green calico, _feel_ the knife as if her own heart is there, being cut to pieces. It is shame and self-loathing, augmented by the gentle touch of the braid – Uncas' braid, she thinks madly – against her brow.

 _(Gentle as his hands)_

But she _is_ looking when the killing blow comes. Looking when Magua turns the struggling young man to clasp him against his chest, looking as he draws the knife across Uncas' throat.

Looking, when Uncas' unresisting body vanishes past the edge of the ravine.

Alice's fear and panic are gone in a fraction of a second.

 _(Her heart must have met the ground at last.)_

There is nothing but calm in her as she stumbles to that very same edge. Nothing but calm as she looks into the abyss ( _where is he_ ) before turning back.

She makes a choice.

Soberly, Alice wonders what must be on her face at that moment, to make Magua swallow so. To make him lower his knife and extend his other hand, beckoning her back to the malignant safety of the rock wall.

A hand that is ruby red with Uncas' blood.

 _Damn you_ , Alice thinks at him, her calm parting for a moment to let the vitriol through.

But as she steps off the edge, Alice's thought aren't on Magua, who she is abandoning on those cliffs. There is a rush of fierce joy at the freedom of the fall, a knife-sharp jab of sadness for Cora, who will nevertheless find her way.

And then there is a frantic, giddy litany of thoughts as she begs Jesus, Saint Patrick, God or whatever pass for deities in these wild, bloody lands that they help her find her way into Uncas' arms.


	4. Magua, the lonely

The last few minutes of Magua's life are the single most reflective of his life.

He no longer thinks of Grey Hair, whose heart he has consumed. He no longer thinks of his sachem, who has turned him away.

Magua thinks of the still bodies of his children, their faces to the ground. Magua thinks of the wide eyes and wider mouth of his once wife when he finally returns, how she knows who he is at the first sight, but is consumed with even more fear at that.

Magua ponders on his many emotions. And in turning the eyes of his mind to them, Magua is deeply surprised.

* * *

He felt nothing for the moon-haired girl, or her darker sister for that matter. The dark flames of his hatred were always for their father. They were instruments in his plan of revenge against the much damned Grey Hair – but the girls, for the duration of the chase, appeared to him barely human. Little dolls with badly painted-on faces. Magua had at one point become annoyed by how they refused to die, how unexpected protectors sprang between them and his knife time and time again. And he'd been furious with the Huron sachem's decision to make both girls live – at the sachem, at Longue Carabine, at the British idiot who burned in their place, but not at them.

He finally found some spark of emotion for the moon-haired girl after slitting the Mahican's throat. Magua turned to see her, edging towards the abyss, and was surprised to see no fear in her eyes.

Instead, Moon Girl's eyes were clear and firm, and Magua thought he had seen their likeness in the iron of a knife.

He'd thought then that there might be some value in her after all. Cast out from his village, all his efforts painted into vanity and greed, there would be no woman ever for him amongst the Huron or the Mohawk. There may be some use in letting the Moon Girl live, perhaps even allowing her to bear his children, even if there was no way she could ever heal his heart.

But the more he looked, the harder Moon Girl's eyes became. Tears formed in their depths, but did not fall.

An unspoken torrent had risen up Magua's throat then. He'd lowered his knife.

He had stopped believing in the strength of the bonds caused by soft emotions, like love, long ago. He believed in anger, hatred, pride: he had hunted Grey Hair's children to destroy his pride by erasing his seed from the world. Had Magua still believed in love, he would have perhaps killed the girls, and left Grey Hair alive to suffer in their lost lives.

 _(Maybe all would have still been the way it was, had he believed.)_

What he'd seen in the chase had been easily dismissed too. The young Mahican's eagerness to save the Moon Girl, Magua had quickly taken for pride: the boy was angry that his ward, whom it was his duty to protect, had been taken. When his white brother and his father failed to appear as they had before, and especially when the Mahican turned to the Moon Girl with soul-filled eyes, Magua had suspected lust.

A few of his Mohawk foster brothers had gone mad for Yengeese girls in their time, for the paleness of their eyes and faces. All but one of them had gone on to find their matches amongst their own people, their surface interest in the pale girls spent. The height of their lust made them possessive, however, and each would have crossed rivers and oceans for their Yengeese dolls, turned desperate by the fire in their loins.

But as the Moon Girl stared at him, Magua doubted. When the last strand of her hair vanished over the cliff's edge, Magua understood he was wrong.

The Mahican boy had flown up the mountain for the Moon Girl, love unconfessed making him reckless. The Moon Girl had flown down the mountain to find him in turn, love unconfessed and fidelity making her brave.

The fidelity he did not see in his once wife's eyes. The love he did not have for his children, even in death.

* * *

He turns away, following the mountain trail. He thinks of the Mahican and the Moon Girl, her still body laid at the feet of his.

She must have took aim as she looked at the abyss over her shoulder. The thought is sobering to Magua.

It would seem that there is still love out in the world, the kind that draws people to their deaths. But it is always for others, and never for Magua.


End file.
